Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on Thursday revealed that he will no longer allow real guns to be used on any set for his production company, Seven Bucks Productions, and will also enforce his no-real-gun rule on any other company he works with.
“I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you, without an absence of clarity here, that any movie that we have moving forward with Seven Bucks Productions — any movie, any television show, or anything we do or produce — we won’t use real guns at all,” Johnson told Variety.
“We’re going to switch over to rubber guns, and we’re going to take care of it in post,” the actor added. “We’re not going to worry about the dollars; we won’t worry about what it costs.”
Johnson’s move comes in the wake of the death of “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. The 42-year-old was shot by actor and co-producer Alec Baldwin on set after he was reportedly told that his gun was “cold.”
The “Jumanji” actor said he was “heartbroken” after he heard the news about Hutchins and within a matter of hours was reevaluating his own production company’s rules concerning guns.
“We lost a life,” he said. “My heart goes out to her family and everybody on set. I’ve known Alec, too, for a very long time.”
“I love the movie business,” Johnson continued. “There are safety protocols and measures that we have always taken in the movie business and we take very seriously, and these sets are safe sets, and we’re proud of that. But accidents do happen. And when something like this happens of this magnitude, [that is] this heartbreaking, I think the most prudent thing and the smartest thing to do is just pause for a second and really re-examine how you’re going to move forward and how we’re going to work together.”
“Any movie we do that Seven Bucks does with any studio, the rule is we’re not going to use real guns. That’s it,” the former professional wrestler asserted.
Seven Bucks Productions co-founder Dany Garcia echoed Johnson’s calls.
“With any movie we do, safety is always paramount for us, and obviously we’ve made a lot of movies that feature firearms,” Garcia said.
“There are stringent protocols in how we approach those things and it was heartbreaking to see what happened on that set,” she said of “Rust.” “And also to hear about it, you could hear the breakdowns in protocol that would have typically prevented that.”
“I think the rest of the industry has felt the ripples,” Garcia added. “I know, for us, going forward, we’re never going to deal with live guns again on-set at all, even for blanks — it’s just not necessary. Forever, moving forward, we’re going to use rubber guns because it’s just not necessary.”
Related: ‘Rust’ Armorer’s Lawyers: Live Round May Have Been Placed In Baldwin’s Gun To ‘Sabotage The Set’